BWSC: BWSC Continues to Evolve to Provide Ever Better Energy

With origins in the stationary engine division of Burmeister & Wain, which built and installed diesel engines from the turn of the 20th century, in 1980 BWSC was founded as a separate company that developed solutions for high-efficiency power plants. Experts for more than 40 years and operating worldwide, BWSC provides expert consulting, engineering, installation, operation and maintenance services through a diverse staff of seasoned experts, full technology independence and 360-degree lifecycle solutions.

In addition to its base in Denmark, BWSC has subsidiaries all over the world established in connection with its turnkey power plant and boiler projects, as well as its many operation and maintenance contracts. Currently, BWSC has extensive activities in Northern Europe, West Africa and the Caribbean. Of BWSC’s more than 700 employees globally roughly 200 are based at its headquarters, and the remainder are integral to these widespread project sites involved in construction, commissioning or operation, maintenance and service of power plants.

“We describe ourselves as professional service providers for both power plant and other energy infrastructure owners,” opens CEO Nikolaj Holmer Nissen, “driven by our mission to deliver world class sustainable energy solutions by helping customers gain more value from their energy investments by increasing productivity, improving fuel efficiency, and optimising operations.” The majority of these customers are utilities, independent power producers or companies that generate electricity for their own use, Nissen says.

“Regardless of their industry, role, facility type or project size, our customers rely on us to help them achieve their goals, overcome any challenges along the way and reduce their carbon footprint.”

FULL PACKAGE

With much of the world’s power and heat generation emanating from boiler-based plants, primarily in Europe, BWSC provides these facilities with lifetime extensions, efficiency improvements, capacity increase, fuel conversion, proven turnkey O&M contracts and more. “Historically this has been centred around boiler-based and engine-based plants, with a focus on technical services, engineering, operation and maintenance, and project management over a maybe 15- or 20-year contract,” Nissen explains.

“We do everything to ensure a robust source of energy production for the owner, as well as a stable cost base for the running thereof. Since our O&M contracts are typically long-term and draw on the local workforce, our operation companies become an integrated part of the surrounding communities, adding value and know-how.

“We also carry out operations on a technical service agreement, over a shorter period, including work like welding and regular maintenance on a client’s facility, as well as more ad-hoc rehabilitation works and lifetime extension projects, for example. We see a clear need to secure a stable supply of power by continually extending our servicing offering at these fossil-based plants.”

Optimising, or changing, the very nature of an existing plant, is a project area coming increasingly to the fore for BWSC. “This could entail fuel conversions, within the engine-based plants, from oil to gas or from heavy to lighter fuel oils, while in the boiler-based business we are seeing a lot of changes from coal to either biomass or gas. Within power plants already using biomass there are then often restrictions in terms of the flexibility in the fuels that can be used, and there we can help clients to change that configuration or broaden it over time if the supply of biomasses changes.”

Whether an EPC contractor looking for a reputable O&M provider for a greenfield facility, or a utility company looking for experts to deliver technical support, inspections, conversions or upgrades to an existing plant, BWSC is on hand with this most comprehensive set of services for what we might term ‘traditional’ power plant owners, backed by the expertise and flexibility accrued from its work on hundreds of sites around the world.

The 38.5-MW straw-fired Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Sleaford Renewable Energy Plant is a superb example, where BWSC has been responsible for the operation and maintenance since commissioning in 2014, and which it also constructed. The biomass plant meets the electricity demand of around 65,000 homes and provides low-cost renewable heat to civic and sports facilities in the town of Sleaford. And BWSC was asked this year to extend the O&M contract until 2034.

“We are very pleased with this extension of our existing contract,” Nissen elaborates. “We are proud that our continued performance on the Sleaford facility and similar biomass plants in the UK gives Greencoat Capital the confidence to extend the contract with BWSC. It both extends the duration and broadens our scope slightly, and undoubtedly these long-term partnerships in the running of their plants is a pivotal part of our business.”

FRESH FOCUSES

The industry has changed almost wholesale since 1843 and BWSC’s earliest industrial roots, but the current global energy sector is experiencing arguably its most seismic shifts to date. “Since last year, we have been exploring our role within more green-focussed energy technologies and solutions,” says Nissen, “such as energy storage, carbon capture, power-to-X.” Power-to-X refers to a number of electricity conversion, energy storage and reconversion pathways that use surplus electric power and are especially useful in energy systems with high shares of renewable generation in achieving decarbonisation targets.

“It is this sphere which is presenting perhaps the most promising opportunities for us to make use of our competences built up over more than 40 years of work within traditional power plants, and to deploy these within this new area. BWSC is evolving to better help our customers succeed, and have refined our role in the industry as a provider of technical, operational, projects and advisory services not only for diesel, hybrid, and boiler-based power plants, but now also for other types of green energy facilities and technology developers. Specifically, BWSC helps clients realize power-to-hydrogen projects by contributing with our strong engineering, technology integration and installation expertise.

“These exciting technologies such as electrolysis and thermal energy storage are placing new demands on the design, operation and maintenance of the facilities where they are installed, but BWSC has worked with renewable energy solutions such as biomass- and waste-to-energy for years and are experts at integrating different power generation sources and systems to become a highly efficient, high-performing power plant.”

Nissen also details the reasoning behind the company’s recent complete overhaul of its branding at this stage of its partial transition. “It is in part aimed at repositioning our company and fully adopting a new role as a service provider, first and foremost, having been known more until now as a turnkey provider, while rebranding BWSC more actively within green energy solutions. We have refined our role in the industry and have launched a new corporate identity that better captures our spirit today as well as a new slogan: ever better energy.”

Strong results since the adoption of its new strategy in November 2020 have unambiguously validated the shift from supplying turnkey power plants to delivering comprehensive advisory and technical services, Nissen summates. “Much of 2021 involved implementing the new strategy, and doing so has paid off in our first positive financial result in five years,” he says, going on to outline the all-encompassing prospect that BWSC presents today.

“Our services help customers continuously improve plant reliability and availability, improve profitability via greater efficiency, modernise with the latest technologies, reduce their carbon footprint, start the transition to green energy, and operate and maintain their facilities cost-effectively,” Nissen wraps up. “Our vast experience with power plant infrastructure puts us in a unique position to assist green energy players with the services we’ve been perfecting for decades, backed by broad experience, technology independence, a wealth of engineering talent and more than four decades of energy facility expertise.

“We will continue to go the extra mile to provide and operate power plant solutions and associated services for a wide variety of energy sources worldwide.”